Builder’s Workshop #14: Building Capacity in Your Organization

Last Wednesday we held our March Builders Workshop, Increasing Capacity in Your Organization.

This was geared toward helping our timebank’s organization members to better connect with each other and timebank members at large, in order to fulfill their mission as robustly as possible while facing the same funding shortages common to most of us non-profit (and for-profit too!) types.

First we had introductions, including each person’s organization or project. We gave an overview using these slides. Then for the bulk of the time we used the Art of Hosting’s World Cafe format for our discussion.

The questions we discussed in the World Cafe:

What would we do if we had all the resources we needed?

What resources have we learned about today that could help us?

What steps can/will we take to make those connections?

As is often the case, the #1 result from this discussion was that everyone got a chance to meet each other and talk more about what they’d really like to do, what they need and have to offer.

And we got some great momentum and action steps from it! We will organize a monthly gathering of organizations and supporters, with hosting duties rotating among participating organizations. We will create more outreach materials geared toward organizations connecting with their staff, board and supporters on the value of timebanking. And we will create a Common Good account in our timebank to make it easy for people to come together for unofficial projects that feed the commons, and to earn their timebank hours from the Common Good account.

All in all it was a fun and productive day. And Kristin Sage made delicious pumpkin muffins too! The notes are here, including the muffin recipe.

And below are the goals stated by participants, along with next steps, written up on the flip charts where we kept notes.

As usual, please feel free to use anything that was generated here and apply it to your own local work. Let us know how you improve on it!

Help the MAN out

Testimonials:

The best part of my job as Creative Director of Mutual Aid Networks is reminding people that we can dream bigger and better than we’re used to, that we don’t need to be bound by a scarcity mindset, and working together we can make our big dreams into reality.
- Stephanie Rearick, Madison, WI